the 13th Hour (8 page)

The foyer was dark. All the lights were out from the power failure caused by the plane crash. He opened the front hall closet and pulled out the oversized Maglite, switching on its blinding beam. Though the sun was still above the horizon, the light of late day was fading fast and would not provide the illumination he would need.

Nick had debated getting a generator like Marcus's but thought it to be a waste of twenty thousand dollars for that one annual moment when the lights didn't work for an hour. Now, as he walked around his house in search of a clue to why Julia had been murdered, he would gladly have paid double to make the light switches respond.

M
ARRIED EIGHT YEARS
this coming September, Nick and Julia had spent their time focused on only two things: their careers and each other. They had resolved to put away a healthy nest egg and own their house free and clear, unencumbered by a mortgage, by the time they elected to have children. Plans were made, schedules outlined, budgets created and adhered to, their life set on paper like a playbook for the Super Bowl. Their vacation expenses were kept to a minimum, forgoing Europe, Asia, and world travel until their later years. Wherever possible, trips were taken via car; camping, museum visits, and overnights at the shore were not only the simplest and cheapest getaways but the most fun. They both knew that a true vacation was not a destination of location, but rather a destination of the mind. So as long as they were together, their vacations were better than anything that could be provided by Paris, Monaco, or any exotic locale.

So their shelves and tables were littered with pictures of them fishing the lakes of Maine, surfing the shores of Huntington Beach, hiking down into the Grand Canyon, scaling the rocky peaks of Wyoming. They cherished the outdoors, the simple amenities that nature had to offer, and always returned home with refreshed, focused minds to tackle their flourishing careers.

While they had only been married eight years, they had been together for sixteen, having dated through high school and college. They had fallen in love at the age of fifteen, while their friends and parents laughed at the fact that they were so sure of their future together. But the laughter fell away when they said "I do" in St. Patrick's Church on that late May day. Neither ever said I told you so to the naysayers; they never needed affirmation or votes of confidence from their family and peers in something their hearts told them was right.

They had met at a swim meet. He was the star of the team, with a handful of school and county records by tenth grade in both long distance and sprint races. Julia had been a last-minute substitution for the 4 X 200 meter relay. As she had spent her brief swim career in the shorter sprint races, the two-hundred-meter leg she would be responsible to anchor was something she had never prepared for. To say she was nervous would have been an understatement. So the coach sent her to talk to Nick, who, as the school's youngest captain, possessed a quiet air of confidence that managed to infect all around him.

As Julia sat down, Nick smiled and told her not to worry, explaining the key was the pacing, conserving your energy, saving it for the final kick on the last few laps.

Of course, when Julia dove in, she took off like a bat out of hell and nearly choked up a lung by the time she got to the last lap. She never told Nick, she never told anyone that she never heard his advice, she never heard a single word he said, as she had gotten lost in his blue eyes, something she found far more intriguing than the strategies of swimming races.

And as she touched the wall, finishing last while seeing stars and heaving for breath, he was standing there with an outstretched hand to help her exhausted body out of the pool. He pulled her out with one hand and nary an effort, wrapped a towel around her, and led her over to the bleachers. As the evening turned to night, as they sat together on the three-hour bus ride home, they became lost in the most relaxing conversation either had ever experienced.

Nick never once asked why she didn't listen to his advice, instead steering the conversation to everything but swimming.

They both loved camping, Led Zeppelin, the New York Giants, and the Detroit Red Wings. They shared a love of spare ribs and fried chicken, Oreos and Coca-Cola. She was a dancer, something he found alien and fascinating. He had a passion for skiing and music, which she insisted on hearing more about.

Simply put, they fit. They fit perfectly. And as the years went on, as they each headed off in different directions--she to Princeton, he to Boston College--their love never waned. In fact, it continued to grow past college and in each and every year of marriage.

That was not to say they didn't have their disagreements. While few and far between, their fights were spectacular, as their passion for each other was equaled by their passion for being right. But the disagreements, always over the mundane things like white bread or wheat, roses or tulips, never lingered and were resolved by spectacular lovemaking.

N
ICK LOOKED OUT
the window of his high-ceilinged great room, at the evidence of last week's get-together with some friends: the deck chairs scattered around the pool, the tables and grill still a mess, three bags of garbage that he was supposed to have thrown out last Sunday. And amidst all the chaos, the pool was calm, the waters smooth and undisturbed, standing in sharp contrast to his current emotions.

The great room looked to be in its usual order: neat and clean but for the painting that had leaned against the far wall for the past six months, which he promised Julia he would hang, and the host of newspapers and magazines that lay on the ottoman, which he had yet to read. The dining room appeared as it usually did, the table perpetually set for a last-minute dinner party.

As Nick looked around his house, he couldn't imagine this to be a random murder. He thought maybe it was some opportunistic criminal who chose to profit in chaos. With everyone so focused on the plane crash, the town was collectively distracted, law enforcement stretched thin. But the randomness . . . something was surely missing, some unseen fact, a key to her death that would also be the key to her salvation.

Nick looked at his home with fresh eyes, searching for anything out of the ordinary, anything out of place or missing, anything that would provide a clue to why Julia was murdered.

He opened the pocket doors to his library and shined the Maglite around. Far smaller than Marcus's, more like a den, it was filled with the evidence of Nick and Julia's life together. If this single room were to survive a nuclear blast and were to be found intact five hundred years from now, an archeologist could draw an amazingly accurate picture of the lives of Nick and Julia Quinn. Their history was laid bare by the locked cabinet filled with trophies and medals from swimming, hockey, and lacrosse that they were too embarrassed to display but too nostalgic to part with; by the shelves of pictures and keepsakes, photos from their prom, graduation, and wedding, with dramatically different hairstyles but unchanged smiles; and by the dozens of pictures of their travels and family holidays. But mostly there were the goofy photos, the just-for-fun, what-the-hell pictures of snowball fights, carnival photo booth silliness, and ice-cream-covered faces that showed them unguarded and at their most natural.

Nick turned to his mahogany desk, moving aside the letters and files stacked to the side, and found his personal cell phone still in its charger. He picked it up and tucked it in his pocket. He had taken to carrying two phones: one personal and one for business, choosing to keep the two worlds separate. Having spent the day working from home, he'd left the personal cell in its charger and was thankful that he had done so as the police had taken his business phone along with his wallet and wristwatch when they brought him into the precinct on suspicion of Julia's murder.

Nick crouched and opened the cabinet behind his desk, shining his flashlight at the small green safe behind the stack of books. There was not a scratch on it, no evidence of a breach.

He headed out of the library and, with the bright beam leading the way, went down the stairs to the lower level. The unfinished basement was his favorite part of the house. A makeshift gym with a treadmill, an elliptical trainer, a stationary bike, and racks of free weights, this was the area that not only kept their bodies tuned but, likewise, their minds. A place to relieve stress, whether by hitting the heavy or speed bags or just by pumping iron, it was a room that was the ultimate detoxification sanctuary. Nick's flashlight bounced off the old dressing-room mirror that lay against the wall, refracting about the space, at the dance bar affixed to the wall, the mats on the floor. He could still smell the faint odor of Julia's perfume from her last workout.

The remainder of the cavernous, concrete space would one day become a playroom, maybe a home theater, but that was years from now. For the time being, it would exist as a storage room with boxes of Christmas decorations, forgotten wedding gifts, and unsorted junk lining the gray walls.

Making his way up the basement stairs, Nick continued to the second floor, quickly passing what would one day be the nursery, past the three unused bedrooms, and arrived at his and Julia's bedroom.

The cream-colored room with its tray ceiling had an enormous four-poster bed that faced an unlit fireplace teeming with cut flowers for the summer. Nick checked Julia's side table, its small drawers, but nothing was out of the ordinary, nothing was hurriedly ruffled or out of place. He checked her walk-in closet, checked his own and the cabinet hidden behind his tie rack, but again, nothing was disturbed. Both their bathrooms were as they'd left them in the morning, towels, toothbrushes, and toiletries in their respective spots. The unused sitting room still had a slight sheen of dust and pollen from the flowers in the fireplace, offering no evidence of an intruder. The French doors to the small terrace were locked, just as he'd left them this morning after Julia surprised him with breakfast.

As Nick walked from room to room looking for anything that might help point him in the direction of Julia's killer, he realized that they had built a perfect home, every room finished and paid for, the envy of many, but it was missing the most important thing. They had dedicated themselves to work, to money, spending their time on acquiring life and things, but had left out the most important part. While they loved each other, never being selfish, they had no legacy, no children to fill the home they had created. With bedrooms lying in wait, it was always one more year and then we will have it all. Now, Nick was beginning to realize they were always counting on that one more year, but who was to say if it would ever come. All that planning, all that money, and now . . .

They had forgone what Nick knew to be the most important thing, and now it was too late, unless he could somehow find a clue to her death and stop it before it happened.

Nick took a last look at the bedroom, really the only area of the upstairs they used. It had not been ransacked; nothing was disturbed. If whoever killed Julia came for something, it wasn't up here.

Heading back downstairs, Nick opened and stepped through his front door. He walked past the open garage bay doors, glanced in at his eight-cylinder Audi, and continued into the driveway proper. Julia's Lexus SUV was right where she left it. Nick quickly checked it, finding the doors open and the keys in the ignition, a sight that was a confirmation that this was no random act, no snatch-and-grab robbery. Her fifty-thousand-dollar car wouldn't be left behind by even the dimmest thief.

He walked to the end of his cobblestone driveway, stood between the two stone entrance pillars, and looked down at the skid marks where Julia's assailant had torn out of the driveway. Nick was smart, and thought he could piece her murder together in time to save her, but he wasn't an educated detective. The width of the rubber skid meant nothing to him, it didn't tell him anything about the type of car or about its driver, or give him some great aha moment as in some TV show.

He looked around their cul-de-sac and down the road, one of the wealthiest sections of Byram Hills, with streets filled with million dollar minimansions, perfect lawns and gardens, all tended by massive crews of gardeners, all except Nick and Julia's home. Nick cut his own grass, planted his own flowers, tilled his own gardens. He enjoyed riding the tractor, cutting the lawn, digging holes. Their house had been Julia's favorite since she was a child, riding by it on her bike. It had been her fantasy home, and Nick had helped her realize that fantasy.

As he walked back up the drive, looking at their house, he thought of all of the upgrades that had been done by his own hand; the addition built with the help of his friends; the painting done on weekends by him and Julia. Some of his best memories were of the time spent together building their home, laughing at the mistakes and imperfections, the paint fights and hammered fingers. It was the simple things, as cliched as it sounded, the peaceful times of being alone with no distractions, eating pizza on the floor, that he cherished most.

Nick walked through the garage and glanced at his dirty car. He was not one for car washes; he preferred his Audi to be a bit on the dirty side in the hope that as it sat on the streets of the city, it would not be noticed amongst the shiny BMWs and Mercedes, blending in and being avoided by the car thieves of the world. It was a practice he had adhered to, much to Julia's annoyance, but it had proven successful to date, so he wasn't about to change. With the accumulation of dust and pollen atop the dark blue metal surface, the handprint was clearly visible on the car's trunk lid, and there was no question it was not his, not Julia's. It was larger, meatier, and out of place.